Software and Demos

ENCASE has implemented an intelligent Cybersafety Family Advice Suite for the protection of minors on online social networks.

ENCASE aims at leveraging the latest advances in usable security and privacy in order to design and implement a user-centric architecture for the protection of minors from malicious actors in Online Social Networks (OSN).

The first component of the ENCASE architecture is a browser extension responsible for notifying the user of imminent threats. The second component is the Intelligent Web-proxy which captures and analyzes all the user’s incoming and outgoing OSN traffic to block or protect traffic when malicious activity or sensitive content is detected. Last, the third component is the OSN data analytics software stack (back-end).

The main purpose of the back-end is to generate and install classifiers in the Web-proxy for the detection of:
a) bot/fake/troll user accounts;
b) hateful or racist text and memes;
c) sensitive pictures/data posted by the minor;
d) sexual predators and cyberbullies;
d) disturbing videos.

The consortium successfully disseminated and communicated its results, as evident by the numerous publications in top tier venues and the extensive international press coverage it has received. It has also successfully delivered and is currently piloting the integrated software system. The ENCASE system augments the key capabilities of state-of-the-art parental control tools to tackle a broader spectrum of cybersafety challenges. Its Machine-Learning-based classifiers are constantly updated via new data and feedback from users so they can remain effective as threats evolve. At the same time, ENCASE’s approach respects the privacy of adolescents and acts as a parental advice (rather than control) tool with a focus on encouraging discreet supervision.

Important Note: Some techniques developed in the framework of the ENCASE project have been commercialized by the Astroscreen startup.

ENCASE is funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchanges Action, Grant Agreement No. 691025.

This project supports the efforts of the Research Executive Agency (REA) for Open Access to scientific results. ENCASE openly links its publications, software, datasets and other artifacts with its project information as required by REA.

Project’s results

The results of the ENCASE project are published by the European Commission.